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astroengine writes "Skepticism was high after videos surfaced earlier this year depicting a UFO over Jerusalem. However, ufologists defended the sighting, dismissing claims that it was a hoax. But a few days ago, the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), one of the oldest, largest, and most respected UFO investigation organizations in the world, announced their findings about the Jerusalem UFO. Yes, even MUFON has concluded it was a hoax."

Every era has had their share of unexplained phenomena. Before UFO's there were demons, beasts, witches, etc. The current myth-of-the day is UFO's.
(And I'm not saying they don't exist, just that there might be a simpler reason for all these sightings)

So what you're saying is that fallen angels have adopted modern stories to continue their nightly activities? I wonder why they shifted from being succubuses to doing anal probes.

I was going to say the same thing. I'm reading it now and it's kinda hard to take any alien stuff seriously after he gets done making the comparisons between it and the things people described demons doing during the Inquisition.

Right... because an alien race capable of surviving without blowing itself up, and then advancing their science to the point that they're capable of building ships that can travel the vast distances between stars or galaxies within the lifespan of an individual has nothing better to do with their spare time than practice fetishism on hicks who've spent one too many cold nights cuddling up to the cows.

Actually I figure if there are aliens it'll be more like a combination of Gorillas in the Mist and one of those African safari tours. Something like "And here with us today is Gee-tain, expert on the TeegeAck hairless monkeys, take it away Gee-tain"

Thanks GuFom, as we get closer you can see the hairless monkeys involved in one of their favorite activities, throwing shit at each other. While this looks amusing from this distance let me assure you the shit they throw is VERY dangerous, and in fact gets more dangerous not less as time goes on. You'd think they'd learn, but hey they're hairless monkeys right?/crowd laughs/ From my first expedition to the crazy planet they have gone from rocks and sticks to sharpened rocks ON sticks, to their current inclination to make primitive projectile weapons based on sticking explosives in tubes.

Now for those with weak third stomachs I suggest turning away as we are gonna swing by one of their warmer regions so we can show you those monkeys engaged in their typical mating rituals. Notice how the male approaches the female in one of their primitive vehicles and waves green paper to entice the female. We still haven't figure out what the females do with the green papers, we think they line their nests with them. Notice how the vehicle with the flashing lights comes every so often to beat on one of the monkeys and drag him away, we believe this is the way the tribe singles out the inferior males. Moving right along we'll next go to one of their areas where a great tribal battle is occurring so you can see the incredible effort the monkeys expend fighting over females and resources...

So if there are any out there I'm sure they look forward to sitting down and talking to a hairless ape like we would look forward to walking up to a Silver-back and poking it with a stick. Any race with the capability to pop all over the known universe would have about as much in common with us as we have to Cro Mags, and with the abundance of resources interstellar travel would bring would have no reason to interact or even visit for anything more than what the English call "shits and giggles".

BTW did they even bother to explain HOW they did it? Because just screaming FAKE is about as completely pointless as screaming COVER UP in cases like this. I read TFA and didn't find squat about how videos taken at so many different elevations and angles was faked. Were they all in it together? Was there a third party creating a light show for the others to film? What? How about giving us a little more than "Shooped!" please?

The majority of the world population, by far, has seen a UFO. Contrary to popular ignorance, that doesn't mean its aliens.

On my soapbox-

I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, wish people would stop purposely conflating UFO to mean alien. The former is a fact, they absolutely do exist, while the later is extremely improbable. People who conflate the two sound like raving idiots. When these idiots then attack those who do believe in aliens, saying UFO to mean alien completely undermines the

There is, more likely than not, intelligent alien life out in the beyond-our-comprehension fucking massive universe. However, I seriously doubt they have visited Earth. More likely, UFO's are experimental aircraft from one of the world's governments, some anomaly such as ball-lightning, etc, or just a hoax.

Sagan was a smart guy, but I don't see why his application of pop-psychology to the matter has any weight.

Popular or not the pyschology is not only plausible, it's been demonstrated. Sagan doesn't just write pop psych nonsense - he gives plenty of very strong evidence of actual historical events including the Salem witch trials. Have you read the book? Or are you just talking smack?

Sagan has demonstrated a tendency amongst human beings to attribute unusual experiences to various shadowy and/or supernatural entities, which change over time, and for which there is never any actual evidence.

Do the words "burden of proof" mean anything to you? If you tell me that your car was stolen by a gang of roving leprechauns, and I point out that you live in a high-crime area where vehicle thefts occur by the dozen on a daily basis, I don't need to show that leprechauns didn't steal your car - you need to present some evidence that they did.

No, it's reality. In science, reputation is largely irrelevant. Oh, sure, other scientists are more likely to listen to an expert in the field, but if he's making ridiculous claims without providing any evidence they'll call him on it and/or dismiss him.

Quite so. Even Nobel prize winners have managed to utterly ruin their reputation by pursuing some harebrained notions. For example Luc Montagnier (a nobel prize winning virologist) has become a laughing stock for self publishing some papers that detected electromagnetic resonances in homeopathic level dilutions of DNA.

The wiser UFO buffs only claim the phenomenon is worthy of serious investigation, NOT that it is definitely aliens driving ships.

Yeah, and the "wiser" 9/11 morons only claim that "we need a new investigation", not that George Bush blew up the WTC with super-nano-thermite so that the CIA could destroy paperwork, the military could steal 500 quintillion dollars in gold, and Larry Silverstein could collect an insurance policy.

Say what you will about the lunatics, at least they're honest about their beliefs. The ones you call "wiser" are still delusional; they've just covered themselves with a veneer or respectability. The thing is...

The evidence he speaks of includes the hard data of sensor technology that has frequently confirmed the reality of physical craft and the high quality of extremely reliable eyewitnesses who are "neither misreporting facts nor delusional."

You're kidding right? If I claim I have evidence of a mountain of gold hidden under Yankee Stadium, including all manner of sensor data, are you going to take me at my word? People make claims like this all the time. Guess what? The evidence never turns up, or if it does, it is found to be mistaken or fake. Every time.

Personally, I doubt we are alone in the universe. However, there has never been any validated evidence of any visitation to Earth. What Sagan points out is that we have very good answers to the question "How can otherwise reasonable people be utterly convinced that they have been taken aboard an alien craft when there is a lack of any evidence to show it actually happened?"

Last time courts had "consensus" to influence science, people were burned, stoned or banished. Your "level of proof" has been shown time and time again to be inadequate to uniformly administer basic justice, I hate to think how quickly all scientific progress would stall if juries were to judge academic papers...

the testimony of hundreds of reliable witnesses isn't a bad start. This level of proof would be sufficient in a court.

Prior to the advent of DNA testing, courts had sentenced to death or life in prison people based on testimony of reliable eyewitnesses, only to have DNA testing later show that those people were innocent of those crimes. While those "reliable UFO witnesses" may be reliable witnesses under normal circumstances, they could very well all be subject to similar occasional brain dysfunctions th

Exactly the opposite is true. You only need to spend some time in a place without effective government to realise that.

The (uniquely American) myth of the day is that there is no role for government in countless different areas that other societies have been fighting tooth and nail to get government to look at.

You want know what life is like when you government ceases to play a role in your life? Corruption is the first sign that things are going wrong. It becomes rampant because nobody's looking out for you, so you have to look out for yourself. People stop planning and start looking for the shortest distance between them and the next meal.

Then security starts to wane. Fewer police patrolling makes the streets less safe, so people -rightly- begin to trust one another less and less.

Then education goes into the shitter, because only the schools run by and for the wealthy are self-sustaining, and the others are staffed by teachers who have to take a second job to make ends meet, even if that means not showing up a day or two a week.

Then crime gets worse, because you get an entire generation of disaffected, unemployed, cynical and frustrated youth who stop giving a damn about you because you never gave a damn about them. They'll just as soon jack you up for your mobile as look at you.

And then it just goes spiraling down from there....

Think I'm making this up? Don't. I'm describing exactly what's happening in the developing country I'm living in. We at least have an excuse, because our government has extremely limited means. You folks in the developed world have no such luxury. So here's my advice: Stop bitching about whether government services are good, and start talking about how to make them better.

Agreed. It is entirely reasonable to accept that there could be aliens. Though a stretch, I could even accept that they might know of our existence and even have been here at some point. What I can't tolerate are the idiots that try to convince the world of their existence and "research" them with a respect for the scientific process and logic that falls somewhere between the mix of paranormal investigators and pseudo-science Coast to Coast AM nutjobs. It's like idiots walking around with an EMF reader saying that there must be paranormal activity in your house, because of fluctuating EMF readings (what evidences has there ever been that one is directly related to the other, for example).

It's not the possibilities that offend me. It's the lack of logic and the embracing of the illogical, which does. They're not any different than nutjobs to employ "faith" as their form of reasoning in any named religion. Except, instead of pointing to a bible as their "evidence", they point to meaningless photos and videos and other unverifiable reports.

I have a problem with Carl Sagan. He delivers skepticism with dismissal and a know-it-all attitude, seemingly based on the assumption that popular science is a... a godsend.

Real Scientists, like Real Programmers, have a very different approach to their philosophy. They don't madly hack and slash with Occam's Razor since OR also has the little talked about, additional qualifier of the need to provide a full explanation; not just the simplest one. E.g. I think that if Carl Sagan had his way with the Standard

Carl Sagan and self-labeled "skeptics" are the Penn and Teller's Bullshit to everybody else's Mythbusters.

The mythbusters are skeptics. Adam Savage has made numerous appearances at The Amazing Meeting - the foremost skeptical conference in the world. He's closely allied with the skeptical movement as a whole, and the show in general is a very simple application of skepticism to everyday claims. If you think that "self described skeptics" are philosophically separate from the Mythbusters, you don't understand skepticism. And - as your comment has amply demonstrated - you clearly don't understand Sagan.

Every era has had their share of unexplained phenomena. Before UFO's there were demons, beasts, witches, etc. The current myth-of-the day is UFO's.

I'm not sure it's good science to lump a phenomena into such broad categories based on vague similarities. Perhaps UFO are a variety of different activities such that even if most are hoaxes or mistaken identity, a few might be something genuinely new.

Most scientists used to dismiss the idea that "rocks fall from the sky" as merely folklore and drunk farmers.

'UFO'* video appears.Some people offer rational explanation.People who believe it's a UFO say nu-uh.Rational people put forth rational explanationPeople who believe it's a UFO say nu-uh.People accept it's a hoax.At no point the people who believe in UFOs think that maybe if the last 100 sighting were incorrect, then may the idea we are being visited is wrong.

To be fair, my father served in the Airforce underneath a Colonel who was friendly with him. This Colonel said specifically he had knowledge of certain things like missile guidance systems, stealth, etc. that were taken from alien technology. Apparently this tech was taken from various accidents (not Roswell BTW). But then again, as a math grad student, I know logic enough to admit its a friend-of-a-friend type of thing. The funny thing is, my dad is a realist and does not fall for crap. Hes the first to ad

To be fair, my father served in the Airforce underneath a Colonel who was friendly with him. This Colonel said specifically he had knowledge of certain things like missile guidance systems, stealth, etc. that were taken from alien technology.

As someone who served in the military for an extended period of time, one of the biggest disappointments for me was realizing that many officers are either retarded or fucking nuts. I know an airforce pilot who's convinced that there is alien architecture on Mars. I know a Military Intelligence officer who is convinced that the Earth is 6,000 years old. Most recently, I had an army Captain tell me that garlic cures cancer.

I think part of growing up is realizing that people - even highly placed people with all sorts of qualifications - are generally full of shit. Most of the time it's simple ignorance rather than malicious lies, but it doesn't change the fact that authority figures are generally just as fallible as anyone else. THE most important thing I've learned in life is to evaluate every claim based on the evidence presented for it, rather than the credentials of the person who is vouching for it. Without that, we may as well be back in Galilean times, where reality is determined by church officials regardless of what data those uppity "scientists" present.

A lot of shady dealings and ongoings go about in MUFON's affairs in local level. This has been the discussion of ufology circles in usa numerous times. MUFON has ceased being a reliable organization since a long while.

i dont know where did the article pull that 'reliable' wordage from.

Actually it goes without discussing that cia/nsa any other agency has started to infiltrate mufon looong looong ago as a policy - way too dangerous to be let loose.

If you argue otherwise, i would like to remind you the black ops divide and conquer operation cia mounted to effect wikileaks breakaway :

It's a bullshit term, used to describe a wide-range of lunatic, misguided, or ignorant folks, with no agreed-upon meaning, who have so far managed to demonstrate absolutely nothing useful at all. If you don't realise that word is a joke, you're in too deep to be helped.

There can't be such a thing as ufology, since you can't actually study ufos: As soon as you have even so little as just enough information to group what you saw into any kind of categories, you've identified the objects, so they're no longer UFOs!

You're hilarious. Seriously. "Ufology" is a fucking joke. There has been absolutely no solid evidence for anything UFO-based, just conjecture backed by wishful thinking and a fanciful take on critical thinking. You provide a great example by posting a link about alleged CIA plan to destroy Wikileaks. That has nothing to do with MUFON. Nothing. Not one iota. Just because something somewhat similar has happened before does not mean claims it has happened again somehow have more credibility. That is n

yees. there has been absolutely 'no solid evidence' for anything ufo-based. and those who came up with anything related to ufos, used to disappear in united states of a.

maybe that was why there has been absolutely 'no solid evidence' for anything ufo based ?

and, despite the fact that 5 major countries of the world has had released ufo files, with a lot of unexplained, official cases, the only one who still did not do so, and discouraging any talk related to ufos, is still united states of america ?

Thanks for proving my point. It's not up to the sceptics to demonstrate how the case files are not actual real UFOs, it's up to the believers to show how they are. So far that has not happened. Not even once. You are attempting to explain the unexplained without evidence. That's childish beyond belief. Carl Sagan's ghost would throttle you in your sleep for such specious reasoning. Your "logic" that because no one has said anything means that something is going unsaid is ridiculous. Extraordinary cl

Again, thanks for proving my point. Science does not work by simply accepting baseless conjecture as anything other than baseless conjecture. You wish to elevate your pet hypotheses to the level of substantiated fact, with no rationale. As I said, it's not up to the sceptics to prove anything, as until the believers prove anything, there is nothing to disprove. Science is scepticism.

You are confusing somebody's unexplained experience with being evidence of aliens buzzing the planet. The complete lack of any actual evidence is the problem, here. People discount the UFO nuts because the UFO nuts haven't yet come up with a single scrap of credible evidence, but do continue to put forth all sorts of plainly obvious hoaxes in order to keep silly people paying attention to them.

project bluebook is just the public relations face of the issue. there has been other things, yet unclassified to this date. cia even mounted remote viewing experiments - total paranormal phenomenon. yet, it wasnt known until someone broke the news out.

"At the level of"? What does that mean? Oh, right - nothing. You are guessing. Let me translate: "Agencies to weird things, so therefore they are capable of doing anything I can think of, and even more than that, because I don't differentiate between guesswork and reality, that means they are doing it". Awesome. The remote-viewing debacle was grasping at straws - they thought if it could work, it was worth the effort to try to get it to work. As it is, they failed massively, and not a single reporte

Aah. The ol' "get out of a losing argument free" card. I used coarse language, so you stop arguing. You have no argument. It's fallacious from its inception. You are guilty of employing the same thought processes employed by conspiracy theorists the world over - tailor the evidence to fit your explanation, instead of the rational approach of tailoring your explanation to fit the evidence. You are playing X-Files. Saying otherwise doesn't magically fix your irrational approach to understanding.

Yup. I know about that. That does not, for one second, mean that any "craft" so highly exotic ever existed, or has ever been recorded. They were entirely concerned with the integrity of their airspace, and not with aliens or other such bullshit.

People are not right-wingers because they don't believe in UFOs (or the Easter Bunny, etc). The poster who told you earlier that the burden of proof is on the "ufologists" has it right. Being skeptical is the *reasonable* position; your position appears to be extremely unrealistic. Please don't live your life according to silly beliefs, instead work to find more solid truth based on real facts and work from there. Belief-driven people are a big problem on this planet, you know...

oh definitely people are not right wingers because they dont believe in ufos - i know atilla dimedici from quite a number of different discussions in other subjects - he is a right wing extremist.

and no, burden of proof is not on the ufologists - this is not a courtroom. this is not a witch hunt. this is a scientific endeavor to explain unexplained phenomenon. so far, what skeptics has been doing is explaining the non-hoax, government-ufo-file released phenomenon as 'weather balloon', or swamp gas, or so

I read TFA, hoping to find out why the videos were dismissed as a hoax. In traditional/. fashion, I didn't follow any links in the article itself. But TFA seems to be a guy saying, "I said it was a hoax, I gave reasons, and now MUFON says it's a hoax". I was at least hoping for reasoning as to why it is considered a hoax- I couldn't find it.

Surely the rational approach would be that until it can definitively be demonstrated as real it must be treated as a hoax. Unfortunately "ufologists" seem to think their pet theories are somehow immune to such an approach, for entirely bullshit reasons.

I agree. The city is full of security cameras, full of air defense, and not one of the non tourists with a video camera saw and recorded anything. Unfortunately I have not seen any security camera video of the area showing nothing happened at the same time. I was expecting one to surface, but that too has been absent.

Unfortunately I have not seen any security camera video of the area showing nothing happened at the same time. I was expecting one to surface, but that too has been absent.

The day we start responding to obvious hoaxes is the day the terrorists win. Seriously, why should the govt waste our money on proving that the video someone took is fake. I'm all for the search for life, but chasing down youtube videos in search of it is a huge waste of time.

We've seen a geometric explosion of people carrying camera equipped gadgets all day every day, and still we get points of light against a black background.

So many of the anecdotal accounts describe up close encounters, huge ships hovering 50 feet off the ground or drifting slowly about in no particular hurry to hide or escape detection, all sorts of details visible. Where the phonecam shots of those? Huh? Huh? Huh? Yeah, I thought so.

And, hey, although a hard core skeptic, I would *LOVE* a real photo of an alien ship. The world could do with the punch in the crotch of that magnitude.

They exist, but sadly haven't given us any more answers. For example, the 2004 Mexico incident. The Mexican government says they were UFOs. CNN had live video as it was happening. You can find the video on YouTube.

Or the Phoenix Lights. I've seen tons of video of the lights themselves, which remain unexplained. I've also seen video during the Phoenix Lights when a large mass covers the sky and blankets out the stars.

The Mexico incident has been thoroughly debunked. They are the flames of oil platforms [alcione.org], being picked up by an IR camera. No mystery there.

As for the Phoenix lights, the second wave have been explained (flares), and the lack of an verifiable explanation for the first wave doesn't mean they were exotic aircraft/spaceships/time-travelling reptilians. Fuck, migratory birds flying in formation cause massive illuminated Vs gliding silently across towns and cities all the time. The human propensity to see stru

I watched the video of the Mexico event as it happened. The lights appeared to stay in a formation and moved through the sky. They also disappeared and reappeared. Oil platforms are stationary. If I recall off hand, the pilots witnessed the balls in the sky for about 30 minutes.

Is that what you call thoroughly debunking?

It was also definitively debunked as ball lightning, except for the fact that ball lightning is a proposed and undocumented phenomenon itself. And no theory on ball lightning would have it h

You should have read the link I posted - it explains everything. Live feeds on CNN don't change a thing. The lights didn't move, the camera moved. The lights were very close to the horizon, which is why they looked the way they did. It has been debunked - whether you want to keep on playing Mulder is up to you, just don't pretend you're taking the objective high ground.

I'm saying that it is a common trope to suggest there are never any photos or videos of UFOs. In reality there are tons of documented cases that remain unidentified and unexplained. But since they are unexplained, it is easy to just overlook them and move on.

I pointed to two examples off the top of my head that I recall following in the news as they happened. Both are well documented and vouched for by government employees. UFOs are not a hobby of mine. I frankly don't care th

It will immediately be rejected as being unrealistic. Who sets up a camera, sets it to a stable angle, and gets a nicely-framed shot of an unexpected phenomenon? Even people who think a UFO hoax will work have enough foresight to realize that they have to make the footage look accidental.

There's also the implication that if the camera is moving that fast it's impossible to composite the UFO into it; thus it must be really in the space it appears to occupy.

If you're an engineer, you should humbly presuppose that you simply don't know enough what it is, and that most likely whatever observations you made are subject to biases typical of eyewitnesses. If you truly think that it's "interesting" that you don't know what something is (it's unidentified, ha), then you must suffer from horrible obsession of identifying stuff. A lot of the stuff we see is pretty much unidentified, people just don't realize it much. Our brains replace the visual reality with a best fi